In Term 1, Year 12 Philosophy students engaged in individual research projects examining a wide range of topics such as the nature of truth, the purpose and effects of guilt, why satisfaction appears to be a temporary state, and whether humans are inherently selfish. Some students needed to do a lot of brainstorming to nail down a topic while others already had a burning question they wanted to find answers to.Over the term, we developed our skills in researching, critical thinking, essay writing and referencing; we learnt how to identify logical fallacies in arguments and how to make judgements based on available evidence. The research phase was at times tedious and at other times really fun, prompting in-depth discussions that spilled over to include the whole class. Pulling our findings together into critical essays was much more challenging but very satisfying, and everyone felt a strong sense of achievement when we submitted our final essays for assessment.We couldn’t sit back and relax once the essays were done – we then needed to figure out how to translate our findings into more accessible and engaging forms. The artistic modes that were chosen ranged from painting to poetry, digital collage to film animation. This phase of the project was definitely the most enjoyable and everyone was proud of the artistic pieces they created.In our last lesson, we presented our findings and artistic pieces, explaining how we came to our conclusions and how our artistic pieces represented our findings. It was fascinating hearing about everyone’s research projects, asking questions and talking about the artworks, which were all so different. Researching topics that we were personally interested in was an engaging way to develop valuable skills and deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world.